In order to facilitate personal financial transactions by travellers, various services have been provided by means of such instrumentalities as credit cards, travellers'checks, travellers' letters of credit and bankers drafts drawn on banking correspondents. Such instrumentalities, while providing desirable services and advantages, nevertheless suffer from a number of drawbacks and inconveniences both to the financial institutions involved and to the holders of such instrumentalities. None of them offer facilities for a traveller to negotiate a personal check in a manner sufficiently secure to obviate the uncertainties and delays inherent in such prior devices.
The present invention has, as a principal object, the provision of a new card type device, to be used in combination with a novel form of personal check, which makes possible a set of financial procedures whereby the holder of such a device may negotiate a personal check, in area remote from his issuing bank, with such secure quarantees to the negotiating party, that the transaction may be carried out expeditiously. In addition such a new device provides a complete and current set of data, to the holder, the issuing bank and the negotiating party, which data represents a duplicate record of that which is recorded on the books of the issuer and shows, to both the negotiating party and the holder, the same details which are available to the issuer.